


This Design in the Brickwork That Looks Like Cracks

by thought



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, alternate universe bdsm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 22:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Tony isn't thrilled, but... well. Easier to play along, to tease around his status than to explain 'I'm not submissive, I'm just queer as fuck.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Design in the Brickwork That Looks Like Cracks

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story includes a description of a poorly nagociated scene between two people under the influence, but it is entirely consensual.  
> A million thanks to [Toomanyhometowns](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/toomanyhometowns) who is my fabulous beta and to whom I likely owe my soul by now.

Contrary to what certain people (Clint) suggest, Tony does not actually spend his days googling himself. He'd tried to keep track of the rumors initially, when he was old enough to understand the concept of celebrity gossip and young enough not to know better, sure, but at forty-mumblemumble and with a full-time job of running R and D internationally and the part-time gig of super-heroing Tony has neither the time nor the inclination to find out which B-list actress is carrying his baby or which member of which royal family he’s been snorting coke off of. All that being said, there are certain conjectures regarding his personal life which remain a constant and which consequently fall into that murky category where sources have become so muddled that no one can be sure if it's fact or fiction. The one that his dad physically abused him is, much to everyone's surprise (including his own, most days) untrue. So is the one about his steamy affair with Rhodey. So is the one that he's secretly a sub.

An unforeseen consequence of living with a bunch of super-heroes is, to put it bluntly, they don't really have day jobs. In Bruce and Thor's case, this means poking Tony insistently until he shoves Thor in the direction of the UN building in full royal regalia and instructions to start dropping words like 'higher form of conflict' and 'protections treaties'. Bruce asks if he might have a corner of a lab somewhere and some test tubes to get back to work on some of his projects. Tony gleefully signs over directorship of the entire biochem department of R and D and proceeds to spend the next three weeks chanting 'be careful what you wish for!' and cackling maniacally.

This still leaves the problem of two SHIELD ex-spies and an out-of-date military super-human running loose in his tower all day; and, like the good little operatives they are, they spend this time familiarizing themselves with their new team and keeping abreast of their media presence. Which is the long way of saying Tony is completely and unapologetically justified when he break's Captain America's nose with his elbow. One-hundred fucking percent.

Ok, so maybe a bit more explanation is warranted. It starts like this. Tony is eight years old and hiding in the conservatory after classes when he's meant to be out playing football. He's found some dusty old university geology textbooks in the storage closet into which nobody ever goes, not even the janitors, and it's refreshing to learn about something that he actually has to work to understand. Some of the older boys walk past the door, jostling and yelling, and they see him, easy prey. They ruin his books and call him names, 'freak', 'wimp', ‘sub’, 'sissy', nothing tony hasn't heard before. Tony curls in on himself and waits for it to be over and he has trouble focusing on even his favourite things, so it's pretty easy to let his mind wander away from getting harassed and he knows the bullies will get bored faster if he doesn't react. Later, in the deputy headmaster's office, the other boys are given a stern talking-to and then told to go straight to their rooms with no dinner.

"Tony," the deputy headmaster says, crouching down in front of Tony's chair to be on his eye level. "Why didn't you fight back?"

Tony shrugs. "It wouldn't have made any difference."

"But didn't you want to?"

Tony sighs. He doesn't know why stupid people get to be in positions of power. "Nope." He's not as strong as the older boys. If he'd tried to fight, he would have just gotten hurt-- the only way those kind of bullies know to respond to an attack, be it verbal or physical, is with physical violence, and Tony hates going to the nurse.

The deputy head sends him off with a pat on the head and a candy bar slipped into his blazer pocket, but on Saturday Tony gets called to a private office where a smiling lady with a bee-hive hairdo and a short skirt asks him a long series of questions and has him kneel on the floor and hold his hands behind his back. She has him write out 'the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog', and takes him outside to get him to throw a baseball and run around the track. When they're done she gives him a hard candy that's melted to the wrapper and the headmaster, passing him in the corridor, tells him his lesson plan might be changing soon. It never does change, and within six months Tony has dismissed the entire incident as grown-ups being weird and bureaucratic. He doesn't think about it for nine years, not until he's seventeen and drunk off his face at an engineering mixer and Ashley from his physics class is there all dolled up with her political science sub on a leash and Tony can't for the life of him stop staring at her. 'Yeah,' he thinks cheerfully, 'I'd tap that.' And then, he realizes he's barely even glanced at the sub. And then he thinks 'fuck no' and 'I'm not a sub', and goes to find a much stronger drink.

He tries not to think about it, but it's like after that night the floodgates have opened and Tony's denial is a dam made of cardboard. He finds himself checking out doms in bars, on campus, in porn magazines. He meets cute girls in his lectures and takes them for coffee and it knocks him off his feet every time when they tell him over scones and dark roast that they're just waiting for that perfect sub. He hooks up in the bathrooms of sketchy clubs and winds up fleeing in frustration every time he gets shoved to his knees.

He finds out his parents are dead on a Tuesday around eight PM. He hangs up the phone, and feeling disconnected and shaky, he goes to pour himself a drink. He has a couple more to calm his nerves, then, like walking through a haze, he walks to the drug store and picks up a bottle of cheap purple hair dye and a stick of eyeliner. He shaves his face clean while the dye is setting over his kitchen sink because he can't stand to face himself in the mirror. He's got a couple pairs of cheap jeans that he wears when he's working on a project, warn thin and soft and about $200 below anything he’d ever be seen wearing in public. Black eyeliner, black t-shirt, a silver chain around his neck. It's a shit disguise that won't hold up to any close scrutiny, but the sort of club he's headed for doesn't exactly have great lighting.

Two doms buy him drinks but they both linger a bit too far over the line between questionably sketchy and serial killer. The third dom to approach him is a tall girl, maybe five years older than him in hot pants and a t-shirt for a band he's never heard of. She compliments his hair and they slip outside to do some quick boundaries negotiations but wind up dropping acid with a group of East German exchange students instead. She takes him back to her place, promising over and over that her roommates are going to be out for hours. She ties him to the bed, then has to untie him to get his jeans off, which he finds fucking hilarious because holy fuck, incompetence is never sexy. That gets him a spanking, and the spikes on her bracelets dig painfully into the skin at the small of his back where she's holding him down. After that there's a thing with a vibrater, which is pretty creative and of which he takes note, followed by a return to the tying down and a good twenty minutes where she bounces up and down on his cock and Tony thinks about mathematical formulae and watches the hypnotic sway of her tattooed breasts and realizes that he's never going to see his parents again. Her stamina runs out or she comes, he's not sure which, and then she jerks him off and tells him what a good boy he is and how well he's done and it's no surprise that Tony responds well to positive reinforcement, so that, at least, serves to get him off. Fucking finally.

He rolls out of bed to grab a towel to clean up. The girl (he should really try to remember her name) moves to push him back down, but he shrugs her off. "I'm just gonna," he says eloquently, waving at the plywood door that leads to the grimy bathroom.

"I can do that, you lay back down and come up."

Tony shrugs. "I'm good. I need to be on a plane in like, six hours, so. Thanks, though."

She frowns, reaches over to tip his chin up. "That did nothing for you, did it? What, are you like a switch or something? Come on."

"Or something," he says shortly, and jerks his jeans on, wincing as the material drags over his over-sensitive cock. He shoves his shoes on the wrong feet and bolts out the door-- she'd never even got his tee-shirt off.

Back in his own apartment he starts a pot of coffee and drinks the first cup hot and black and fast. Five minutes later he's huddled under the shower throwing it right back up, clutching at the hand rail and shaking uncontrollably. He doesn't know what’s wrong with him, knows it can't be sub drop because he's heard people describe sub-space and he hadn't come anything close to it.

Eventually he climbs carefully out of the tub, legs still feeling like spaghetti, face hot. He looks at himself in the mirror, eyeliner gone grey and smeary on his cheeks, hair a washed out, brownish purple standing on end and dripping down the back of his neck.

"You're parents are dead," he says out loud. "You are alone in the world."

He makes his flight, suit immaculate, hair re-dyed a shiny black and slicked back, shoes so polished you can see your reflection if you care to look. He sits through the funeral and the awkward handshakes and embraces from people he's never met and signs all the documents the lawyers put in front of him and there is always a drink in his hand. Throughout all of this he can't stop poking at the niggling confusion, sluggishly bleeding at the back of his head like a loose tooth-- he's not a sub, apparently, which is both a relief (in that it'd be a hell of a lot harder to run the company as a sub, all equal-opportunity legislation aside) and concern because if not a sub, then what the fuck is he? Not a switch, either-- he'd been absolutely into that Dom until she'd started actually, well, domming him, and while he's been sort of aesthetically attracted to subs before he's never wanted to be in a relationship with one. He knows he should be focusing on his all-encompassing grief and the fact that he is essentially an orphan-- emancipated, obviously, because the government has no desire to put up with Tony Stark for the six months until he turns eighteen, but apparently he's just that self-involved or that desperate for a distraction because he's back at school within a week and diving into the strange and foreign land that is the humanities library. He huddles down at his scarred wooden fortress behind embattlements built of everything from 'Orientation and Gender Anomalies in the twentieth century and Their Sociocultural Impact' to 'My Dom Likes to be Whipped!: and other scandalous tales of bedroom kink'. Eight hours and three energy drinks later he's got a list of terms scribbled down on a sheet of loose-leaf and not much more of an answer than when he started.

According to his research he could be a few different things. There's unoriented, which would be inconvenient and make for good gossip at society parties and probably mean that Tony will be forever alone. There's also homo-orientation, which makes his cheeks flush hot with shame and no, ok, he's Tony Stark, he can't be a queer. There's also asexual, which, shut up, is actually a new one for him. He's pretty sure it's inaccurate, because he absolutely likes sex, it's just the power exchange inherent in relationships he's not nuts about, apparently. In the end he sticks with unoriented, mentally, and promptly makes all possible efforts to ensure it stays a secret.

That lasts four years-- two doctorates, a cross-country move back to California, even the whole Tiberius disaster. Eventually he has to admit that he's been prolonging the inevitable-- he's really just not attracted to subs, he really is attracted to doms, even if he doesn't quite know what he wants to do with them. And, because he's Tony Stark, within the year he's thinking 'queer' not with awkward discomfort but with a snarling of fierce pride in the term. He's still careful, still has no desire to come out, but he's also drinking a lot and doing a lot of drugs with a lot of famous people, so it's inevitable that the press gets a hold of the rumours.

'Tony Stark caught checking out dom fashion designer', the headlines accuse. 'Stark hiding submissive status?'

And Tony isn't thrilled, but... well. Easier to play along, to tease around his status than to explain 'I'm not submissive, I'm just queer as fuck.' It's a game, fucking with the media and the board of directors and all the pretty starlets who hang off his arm. And hey, it's the nineties. The back rooms and limousines and down town penthouses are filled with people experimenting with orientation and gender and sex and politics and philosophy. Tony imagines it's a bit like the sixties if the sixties came with grunge and power suits and the constant rush to tailor liberal values to the capitalist system because Y2K, baby, hold on tight.

He meets Pepper in ninety-five, riding the eight o'clock caffeine rush down the halls to a meeting with legal. Everything feels muffled and dream-like, soft carpet and dark glasses and the scent of coffee and paper gusting along with the air-conditioning. She steps out into his path and holds up a clipboard.

"Mr. Stark. You need to look at this."

"I need to be in a meeting, actually."

"Accounting made an error in the area of six-hundred K which no one has seemed to notice."

"So take it to accounting?"

"I just came from there. Apparently members of the secretarial pool should keep their mouths shut and focus on getting coffee, not worry about those big scary numbers."

"You're a sub?" Tony asks, actually starting to pay attention. "Should I know you? This conversation seems awfully personal and I’ve got an assistant if you want to schedule a meeting, but I'm really not the guy you should be bringing harassment complaints to, there's an entire HR department--"

"Oh my God, you actually have no comprehension of office politics, do you? Just look at this."

He twitches away when she shoves the clipboard at him. "I don't, um, like being handed things."

"Ok," she says agreeably, which gets his attention more than anything because most people respond to that with either mockery or patronizing attempts to humour him, but she just takes it in stride like he's stating a perfectly reasonable limit. She also holds the clipboard right in his face so he basically has to read the sheet attached to it, which loses her a few brownie points because hello, mildly obnoxious, but once he starts skimming and the numbers click over rapid-fire in the back of his head he forgets all about propriety and points.

"Long-term this is going to be a lot more than six hundred," he says absently. "Has this made it through processing?"

"Not yet, I've been holding it up."

"Good. Find out who was responsible and get them fired, then get somebody who passed college with more than a 2.0 to redo everything in this account, check the entire docket and whatever else this guy was working on."

"I'll have people look into it, Mr. Stark," she says.

"No, no, you should-- secretarial pool, that's what you said, and I'm-- no, ok, wait. What's your name?"

"Virginia Potts."

"And yet you are not actually eighty years old. Can I call you Pepper? Because, you know, your hair is red, and Peppers come in a variety of colours, one of which is red-- I could've gone with something carrot related there, but I didn't, ok, because we are all about creativity and innovation here at SI, I am the best role model. Also alliteration, did you catch that? Alliteration sells better, true fact, there are studies and everything."

"Get to the point," she snaps, and her hand promptly comes up to cover her mouth. "I mean--"

"Ahahaha, yeah, no, I like you. Not actually a sub, I’m guessing, which, hey, me neither, contrary to popular belief, so you won't be able to dom me into doing my paperwork, but I'm sure you'll come up with creative and innovative solutions nonetheless."

"You just said you've already got a personal assistant."

"I lied. well, no, that there just now was actually the lie, but I don't like him, he can totally be fired-- or moved to a different position, Jesus, don't look at me like that, job security is important, ok, I get it. There'll still be dinner on the table for little Timmy tonight."

"I'm going to regret this," Pepper says, which is as good as a 'yes'.

And that sort of sets the tone for the next thirteen years of his life, to be honest. He tries to keep his ridiculous and totally inappropriate crush on Pepper under wraps until they're driving back to the hotel from a charity dinner in Vancouver and Happy cuts down Davies where a group of subs are just spilling out from a nightclub, all leather and lace and cigarettes and drunken laughter. One of them blows a kiss toward the window of the car and Tony automatically flutters his eyelashes in return even though it's probably not visible in the gloom of downtown's permanent twilight.

"Should we stop for your new conquest, Mr. Stark?" Pepper teases, half-hearted with red wine sleepiness.

Tony looks across the backseat at her, hair unpinned, stocking feet tucked up on the seat. "Not my type," he says, keeping his tone casual. "Subs don't really do it for me."

Pepper straightens a bit, then seems to give up on the idea and slumps backward. "Me neither, actually."

Which is the story of how Tony stops trying to hide his massively inappropriate crush on Pepper whenever they're in private. It takes a cave in Afghanistan and a brush with palladium poisoning and a dramatic shift in their professional positionality to each other before either of them do anything about it, but he's pretty sure it's worth the wait. Tony's been with other doms, but it's never been anything more than sex, rough-and-tumble fights for dominance that only remain satisfying if there's no winner. The relationship aspect is, rather surprisingly when you consider his massive allergy to commitment and domesticity, just as good as the fantastic sex. When Tony's imagined settling down it's involved watching CSI over roast-beef dinner, a family dog, forced smiles at Cousin Joe's wedding. ...there's a possibility the entirety of Tony's understanding of committed relationships comes from eavesdropping on the junior staff members in R and D at the water cooler. In reality, he and Pepper don't actually change up their relationship that much-- they have sex now, and she moves her stuff into the house, and on occasion if one of them is trying to play at being a well-adjusted non-workaholic who can stop any time they want they're will be coffee dates or early-morning breakfast on the beach. As a bonus, the media, with the exception of a few gossip rags, suspects nothing. They're just two good friends, colleagues who live out of each other's pocket because they're neither of them ready to settle down with a nice sub. They give up on the paranoia-- they attend events together, book singular hotel rooms, allow the mocking 'dear's and 'honey's fall where they will.

2012 comes, and brings with it the completion of the tower. It's meant to be a year for new beginnings, but then Loki happens, and The Avengers happen, and a nuclear bomb happens, and most importantly, Bruce Banner happens. Not quite the new beginnings Tony had been hoping for, but you won't see him complaining. He's read the files on his fellow Avengers, and Bruce is...wrong. Because over the years Tony's gotten good at reading someone's orientation without having to ask. Romanov and Barton, to look at them, don't have a submissive bone between the two of them, but even in 2012 Tony knows you've got to be a certain way to be in the military, and neither of them have had childhoods that encouraged showing trust or what somebody might perceive as weakness. He can tell Steve's surprised when it comes up that they're both subs over post-saving-the-world dinner, and the concerned glint in his eyes has Tony waiting in glee for the moment when Rogers calls either agent a brat or implies that they're looking to be taken in hand because the resultant fireworks are gonna be great. Tony's already got a bet on with Bruce about how long it takes the twenty-first century to show Rogers that he's a switch, and how much internalized subphobia's going to come about as a result. Thor takes a little while-- at first Tony's filed him under 'obvious sub in denial' right along with his brother, but the more he watches the more he has to reconsider. The thunder god likes taking care of people even if he's not always the best at it, and often his unfamiliarity with Earth leaves him coming across as eager to be lead when he's actually just eager to learn. So yeah, Tony's wrong about Thor at first. But he is absolutely certain he's not wrong about Bruce. Because Bruce's file says sub, and Bruce is shy and gentle and nervous and soft-spoken and Tony is 100% sure that there is not a single goddamn thing in the world that is less appealing to Bruce than giving up even a modicum of control. There are other things, too: the way, once he's comfortable with the team, that he has to clearly hold himself back from offering reprimands or reassurance or direction, the way he reacts to Steve and Tony's casual moments of dominance with a sort of patronizing bemusement. It makes Tony want to push until he gives in and pushes back. That doesn't take more than a month.

Twenty-seven hours in the lab trying to save the world and Tony says 'What we need is our own personal Jack Harkness to test this shit."

And Bruce sighs. "I don't get that reference, Tony, can you not?"

"How have you not seen Torchwood, Jesus, come on."

"I've been kind of busy, you know--"

"Playing white in shining armour over in India? How's that MD coming, Banner?"

And It spirals from there, tension and sleeplessness and frustration sharpening their words to raiser points.

'Getting rusty, Banner,' Tony thinks with satisfaction and he and Bruce hit minute seven of their fierce staring contest. Finally Bruce takes a few visible breaths and pointedly turns away in what is so clearly an expression of 'I'm done with you' rather than 'I give in' that Tony actually chuckles. That night after some judicious application of his hacking skills, he wanders into the kitchen where Bruce is making dinner and waves his tablet under the other man's nose.

"1984," he says gleefully. "Robert Bruce Banner gets a library card."

Bruce sighs, and glances around before flipping off the stove. "Little agents have big ears," he says, clasping his hands together in front of him. "Can we do this somewhere else?"

In Bruce's lab, Tony sets the tablet down and waits. Bruce blows out a breath. "I've always been one of those people who people read as a sub. Never much for pushing people around, and I could barely take care of a house plant. Most people assumed I was a sub growing up unless they saw my documentation. After-- the other guy, Betty, my girlfriend at the time, thought maybe I'd seem like less of a threat to the military if I was classified as a sub. She knew-- knows a lot about the inner workings of the military, more than I did, so I went along with it. Had one of her friends go back through my records and change everything--"

"Except your library card from grade school," Tony butts in.

Bruce rubs his hands over his face. "I guess he missed that one," he agrees ruefully.

"My question," says Tony, "is how anybody could mistake you for a sub. I know there're all types, but come the fuck on."

Bruce shifts slightly. "I wasn't so much on control before the other guy," he says. "Also... younger. Didn't quite... understand what I wanted."

Tony tips his head forward, grinning. "You never said Betty was your sub."

"No," Bruce agrees. "I didn't."

"I won't tell the rest of the team if you don't want me to," Tony says. "About... any of it. The dom thing, or the gay thing. I mean, obviously I'm cool with it, you guys all know about me and Pepper--"

"I appreciate that. I'm not sure how people would react, and I'm not sure I trust Natasha or Clint not to report back to Fury. Also bi, if we're being specific."

Tony shrugs. "Right. Awesome. Really glad we had this chat. Hey, do you think this counts for our team bonding exercise of the week?"

Which, if Tony's being honest, is the story of how he stopped hiding is massive and inappropriate crush on Bruce and is therefore fucking delighted when two months later he walks in on Pepper and Bruce engaged in an icy, rapid-fire argument across the breakfast table.

"Please tell me you want to fuck this out," Tony says; and, because anyone who tells you that real life isn't like porn is lying, they do. Various childhood traumas have taught Tony and Pepper that they are probably not worthy of anything good, which simply means that they're always expecting the good things to be snatched away and as a result have a very tenuous grasp on the concept of willingly giving something good the opportunity to leave. Which is the long way of saying one round of angry sex becomes a long-term and stable relationship within the span of five hours and Bruce is legitimately not quite sure how it happens.

It changes things, of course. Tony and Pepper are occasionally a tiny bit high-strung, and demanding and pushy. Bruce is none of these things. Bruce is also attracted to subs, and all of this culminates in a lot of arguments wherein Tony and Pepper scream at each other happily until Bruce cuts in sharp and soft-spoken, usually with some variation on 'don't speak to each other until you can act like adults', which never ever goes over well. They're working on learning to talk things through, but it's a process. Sex, on the other hand, is an entirely enjoyable learning process. It takes a while to coax Bruce into asking for anything, the Hulk leaving him leery of taking any sort of initiative, and he's never really aggressive like they are, happy to go with the flow.

And then there's a day where General Ross tries to pay a personal visit to the tower. JARVIS warns them in time and he doesn't get a step past the front desk, but it leaves Bruce jumpy and on edge all afternoon and into the evening. Finally Pepper says "cuddles" and they get Bruce undressed and into bed and breathing deeply, and then Tony says "sex", and a tiny smile quirks the corner of Bruce's mouth and an unfamiliar gleam sparks in his eyes. His heartbeat under Tony's hand remains slow and steady. He sits up and slips a hand under Tony's skull to guide him up for a kiss, the other hand sliding down to wrap around Pepper's wrist. And... Ok, look. Tony and Pepper aren't subs, they're not attracted to subs, they don't get off on doing what they're told or have some sort of deeply repressed desire for approval. They'll laugh in the face of anyone who trots out the tired 'well *somebody's* still got to be the sub' anti-queer rhetoric, if they push they expect to be met by an equal push back. All that being said, they're the sort of people for whom calming down their minds is a novelty, and who 100% get satisfaction from performing a task perfectly. So no, Bruce doesn't dom them, not exactly, but by the end of the night they're both sleepy puddles of contentment and Bruce has settled back into his skin, feeling back in control after the unexpected shock of the threat of a complete loss of it that Ross threatens.

Bruce sort of accidentally comes out as a dom to the rest of the team the next morning, after the three of them do the walk of incredibly satisfied shame from the bedroom in the penthouse in search of coffee and Clint makes some sort of joke about Tony and Pepper just needing to find the right sub and then Tony snipes back because fuck that noise and also ahahahahahaha irony, and it sort of spirals from there.

"I knew he was a dom all along," Tony says, draping himself obnoxiously over Bruce while the other man rinses out the coffeepot. "I'm never wrong about these things."

"You're still saying Loki's a sub," Natasha retorts.

"Because he is."

Steve shakes his head. "The football stadium of people he tried to bend to his will last week begs to differ."

The next time they go up against Loki he's wearing a silver metal collar engraved with something that looks vaguely Cyrillic but which Tony has no desire to get close enough to read. All cheques may be made payable to Tony Stark, motherfuckers. Tony's feeling pretty good about himself --the battle is, well, against a herd of over-sized angry water buffalo, ok, there's no delicate way to put it-- and then Cap and a couple of the SHIELD red-shirts catch a good look at the collar and start throwing around sub-shaming taunts, real locker-room bullshit that Tasha and Clint have reassured the team on multiple occasions doesn't bother them but still makes Tony kind of uncomfortable, even if he doesn't feel like he has the right to say anything about it. Even Thor, who has apparently taken this 'learn to be a good king' crap to heart and thus has spent his time on Midgard reading every sub rights book he can get his hands on, seems a little uncomfortable, like Loki's airing the royal family's dirty laundry a bit too close to the peasants-- Tony's read about the horse, ok, he's pretty sure there's nowhere to go but up.

One of the SHIELD guys says something, Tony doesn't catch it because he's busy getting attacked by a surprise power line while Clint cackles like the asshole he is, but Loki waits until he's righted himself to deliver his retort, along with a jet of green fire that takes off the SHIELED guy's arm (Tony has to look away because yup, that is an arm just chilling out on the edge of the harbour).

"Perhaps," says Loki, grinning. "it bothers you that I refuse to be ashamed of what I am? That I am still more powerful than you can ever hope to be? Would you prefer I lied, hid behind a false identity to preserve your delicate sense of pride and honour?"

And hey, Thor’s told them about the adoption and the part where Loki’s spent his entire life thinking of his own species as the monsters under the bed, so good for Loki, starting to fucking own the internalized racism thing, Tony thinks, but Loki's fluttering his fingers in a parody of a friendly wave in Tony's direction and everyone has gone very quiet on the coms and a few SHIELD people are very carefully looking anywhere but at Tony and …oh. Not the Frost Giant thing.

"Are you fucking with me right now?" Tony demands. A water buffalo grunts darkly off to his left.

"Good to know super-villains read the tabloids too," Clint chirps. "I've got a clear shot, by the way, where are we on the brotherly affection scale this afternoon?"

"Shoot the fucker," Tony says without hesitation. Thor objects right away and Steve makes an uncertain sort of noise that clearly translates to 'don't hit subs' and Tony jets up, kicks the last water-buffalo in the face and flies off into the sunset without another word in order to express just how not impressed he is at everybody's reactions to Loki's accusation. Loki's probably got all that time to read the tabloids because of all the sex he and Doctor Doom aren't having; of course Tony recognized the make of the collar, and he wonders if Loki knows about the tracking chip (not trackable by anyone else including Tony, of course, because Doom is inconveniently as good at engineering as he is awful at world domination).

Nobody winds up apologizing for basically nodding along when Loki called Tony a sub in denial, but Steve doesn't yell at him for missing debrief and Thor offers earnestly to share his pop tarts with Tony the next morning at breakfast. He'll take it.

That next Saturday is a shitty day. The regular steady community of hummingbirds that usually live inside Tony's brain has become a swarm of angry, directionless wasps, circling around and around getting nowhere and buzzing loudly while they do it. He can't be in the workshop because he doesn't have any projects that need his attention and absolutely no new ideas are presenting themselves; he can't go outside because the streets of New York contain approximately a million too many sources of sensory input; he can't even spar with anyone because he'd probably lose track of the fight and get a fist to the face and then there’d be guilt and ice packs and no thank you. He's pacing a groove around the TV room, on his fourth cup of coffee that isn't doing a damn thing to help and is ramping his physical energy levels up to match his mental ones.

"Hey, you ok, Tony?" Steve asks. He's curled up on the sofa with one of the Song of Ice and Fire books because Clint and Natasha won't shut up about them and now they're dragging Steve down too.

"Yeah, fine," says Tony. "Sorry, I'll go be somewhere else."

"You look really upset," Steve objects, standing up. "Do you want to talk about it?"

It makes Tony's teeth hurt, sometimes, how genuinely Steve means those sorts of things. He clasps his hands behind his back to keep them from shaking and wanders over to stand near Steve and the sofa. "I'm ok, I promise. Just restless. Jittery."

Steve relaxes. "You want to go for a run?"

Tony weighs the pros and cons, then shakes his head. "Nah, sorry, too much...everything out there. I'd probably run into a light post."

Steve frowns. "Bruce has been recording that show with the guys that you like to make fun of, we could watch that."

Tony sighs, and gives in, throwing himself down on the sofa and grabbing a tablet from the end table. "Ok, Cap. Let's let Myth Busters do its worst."

Steve cues up a couple episodes and Tony tries to focus just on the show and the social media feeds he's got open on the tablet, but it only takes a couple minutes before he's shifting around, bouncing his leg, glancing towards the windows and the door. Steve reaches over to rest a heavy hand on his jiggling knee, holding it still. Tony can imagine the potential energy building up inside of him, watches the numbers in the equation get bigger and bigger. He tries to twitch his leg out from Steve’s hand, but Steve presses a bit harder, which on principle drives him fucking nuts.

"Can I try something?" Steve asks. "Don't get mad."

Tony firmly removes Steve's hand, but he's not really thinking clearly so he agrees automatically, nodding like a fucking bobblehead to Steve's question. Steve slides a bit closer, turning to face Tony a bit and brings up a hand, settling it lightly at the back of Tony's neck. Tony doesn't even try not to roll his eyes, because for fucking real, not a goddamn sub. He goes to pull away and Steve's grip tightens suddenly, wide palm and long fingers wrapping firmly around his nape, pushing down a bit and Tony twists away towards the arm of the sofa and Steve presses in behind him, other hand against his back murmuring reassurances, encouraging Tony to breathe, to relax and hey, funny thing about Tony that very few people know-- get someone bigger and stronger shoving down on the back of his neck, not letting him get away and his mind provides helpful reminders of the last time this happened. Spoilers: last time involved a cave in Afghanistan and water torture. Tony's body reacts automatically, his mind still caught in 'oh fuck no no stop it can't breathe stop it get off get off get off get off'. Steve's obviously aware enough to realize that something's legitimately wrong, because he backs off eventually, or Tony gets away, maybe, he's not really sure, but when he can think clearly again he's on the carpet hyperventilating and Steve's behind the sofa cradling his bleeding nose. Oops.

Tony sucks in lungfuls of air, hands up in front of his face to keep anything from obstructing his access to it. His head feels woozy and when he shoves himself to his feet his legs are kind of numb. He staggers towards the bathroom, walking backwards to keep his eyes on Steve. The door slams shut in front of him, finally, and he takes half a step towards the toilet because he's gonna throw up, there's no getting around it, but the idea of kneeling with his head over a bowl of water has him pivoting and emptying his stomach over the dry porcelain of the bathtub in a horrible replay of every party he attended in his twenties, wrenching coughs jerking tears from his eyes, hands braced against the far wall as he tries not to get vomit on his shirt. When he's done he turns on the shower to rinse out the tub and leans up against the counter, head tipped back against the mirror while the water spatters briskly, never collecting in the bottom. He catches a palmful of water and, focusing really hard on not thinking about it, swishes it around his mouth before spitting into the tub. He still feels dizzy and shaky.

According to JARVIS he's in the washroom for a good forty minutes, but when he comes out Steve is sitting against the wall, knees drawn up and eyes down. He doesn’t get up when Tony stands over him, but he does meet his gaze. "I'm really sorry, Tony," he says. There's dried blood crusted on the front of his sweater.

"Hey, it's fine. You, um, had no idea that I'd react like that, lesson learned."

Steve twists his hands together against his shins. "It's not really ok, Tony. I've been pretty disrespectful about your orientation, and I made an assumption with data that I knew might be false."

Tony shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. His brain is still buzzing, the highlights of Afghanistan on repeat, statistics scrolling past, all the deaths that his weapons caused, Steve's desperately guilty expression. "You also weren't operating with all the relevant data," he mutters. "Please please stop feeling bad about this, you're just making me feel guilty for making you feel guilty and I kind of already hate myself a lot right now--"

"JARVIS gave me some books about PTSD when I first moved in," Steve says carefully.

"La la la la," says Tony, and goes off to lie in bed and think about how he's a horrible person some more.

Clint knocks on his door a while later, and loiters uncertainly when Tony calls him in. "Look, Stark. I get not wanting to talk about this shit, but getting over abuse, torture, I kind of know a thing or two about that, and I'm not saying you've got to follow the twelve-step program with weekly therapist visits or whatever, they're different circumstances for Cap anyway, but... the option's there, is all I'm saying. If you ever want some suggestions. Or to... talk, I guess?"

"Oh my God, Barton," says Tony, amused. "I won't make you talk about feelings, I promise."

Clint flips him off. "Um, I'm also here if you ever, for whatever reason, I'm not judging, wanna talk about, like, unconventional submission styles? You and me are probably pretty similar in a lot of ways, so, you know."

Tony punches his pillow. "Get out."

"Hey, I'm just--"

"Out," he repeats sharply, and Clint goes. Motherfucker, this is getting ridiculous. Steve he gets, at least a bit. Steve is trying but he's still that guy who calls personal assistants secretaries and spells it 'domme' and says 'stewardess' instead of 'flight attendant' and literally every time they find out that one of the crazies trying to take over the world is a sub he starts on the 'they just need to be rehabilitated!'. But Barton? Barton who subs for Coulson and only Coulson and even then only in certain ways, and who's attached at the hip with Natasha, who uses doms like she uses fucking energy bars, takes what she needs and forgets about them. Tony's pissed, is what he's saying.

Bruce comes in when the sun is starting to set through the full length windows, red and orange leaking lazily across the hardwood. Tony's managed to latch on to a piece of code that Bruce has been having trouble with, detangling his rambling fucking if statements into something more economical and streamlined.

"Hey Tony," he says, kicking off his shoes and stretching out beside him.

"I'm sure somebody's told you what happened, I'm sure whoever told you was biased somehow, I'm sure I really do not want to talk about it, everyone's an asshole including me. Why the actual fuck is this in C? The nineties called, Brucie."

"Will you tell me what happened so I don't have a biased account?"

"Nope. Busy."

"I brought you coffee but it looks like you don’t' need it."

Tony shrugs. "Leave it there, don't know yet. I kind of threw everything up earlier, so."

"Pepper's on her way up, I'm warning you."

"Does she know? Stupid question, of course she knows. Oh man, she's going to fuck Steve up, isn't she? Shit."

"I thought you were busy, just don't think about it, there's nothing you can do to stop her."

"He didn't know," Tony says, sighing. "In the grand scheme of things, maybe he was a bit of a douche, but he was trying to help."

"I've actually been thinking we should maybe have a team meeting where we... share our various triggers, for lack of a gentler way to put it."

"That honestly sounds like the worst experience of my life," Tony says.

Bruce changes the subject in the way that clearly means he's just biding his time. Pepper comes in a worryingly long while later looking satisfied.

"You talked to Steve, didn't you?" Tony asks, a little afraid of the answer.

"I did," Pepper nods, and sprawls across the foot of the bed. "He's spent a bit too much time reading the tabloids and SHIELD's files. I cleared things up for him."

"I should just publicly come out," Tony says irritably. "Make a press conference of it, give people something to really talk about."

Pepper whimpers. "Christ, Stark."

"That actually might not be a bad idea," Bruce says thoughtfully. Pepper sits up fast. Tony blinks.

"I was kidding."

"I know, but if you think about it, it might work out better than you think. There are a lot of kids out there who could probably benefit a lot from seeing an Avenger come out as queer."

"I am not Anderson Cooper," Tony says flatly. "Besides, that would lead to the question of who I'm dating. Say goodbye to your privacy."

"They'd guess me," Pepper says gently. "Bruce is still pretty unknown. I'm not."

"And?" Bruce asks, purposefully keeping his voice mild and purely curious.

Pepper rubs her hands against her eyes. "Try a 'lack of faith' vote from the board. Public opinion would plunge, I can't imagine how many points we'd drop. It's fine behind closed doors, hell, most of my peers know I'm sleeping with Tony, we just don't talk about it. It's public opinion you've got to worry about."

Bruce purses his lips. "You think it'd affect things that strongly?"

Pepper nods. Bruce's shoulder slump. Tony awkwardly tries to change the subject. "What did you do to Steve?"

Pepper pats his ankle. "Nothing, Tony, honestly. He wasn't being malicious, I know, but he's got to catch up eventually. You don't try to put someone down, even a little bit, without their permission, and now Steve understands that. It's still blowing his mind a tiny bit that I'm a woman and in charge of a multi-national company, and feminism was going hard and strong by the forties. Sub rights are just another learning curve he's going to have to deal with."

Tony rolls over on is stomach, smushing his face into the pillow. Bruce rubs is back between his shoulders. "Do I really come across subby?" Tony asks, then says it again without the pillow muffling his words.

"The daddy issues make you needy," Pepper says promptly. Bruce twitches. Tony sighs.

"I honestly don't see it," Bruce says thoughtfully. "I mean, obviously the only true way to know somebody's orientation is to ask them--"

"Unless you're me," Tony cuts in smugly. Bruce frowns disapprovingly.

"It's the acting out cliche," Pepper says. "It's no wonder Steve has you pegged, in all honesty. I would've expected better of Phil, though-- did you know your SHIELD file actually has you marked down as a sub, Tony?"

"That explains so much," Tony says.

"You've never hacked your file?" Bruce asks, surprised.

Tony shrugs. "Natasha gave me the cliff's notes a couple years ago, and I've got better things to do with my time."

"There is something that I have hacked and Tony Stark has not," Bruce says. "Mark your calendars, ladies and gentlemen."

Tony waves him off irritably. "Yeah, yeah, don't quit your day job-- oh wait, you work for me, really, don't quit."

"Actually, he works for me, technically," Pepper cuts in. Bruce flops backwards into the pillows.

"Thank you for reminding me that my entire life is one giant conflict of interest suit waiting to happen."

Pepper rubs his hip reassuringly. "Oh honey, it really isn't, but it's sweet that you think so. Just go back to your lab and leave the real world to me-- incidentally, Tony, what did you do to Clint?"

"Seriously?"

"He was all kicked puppy when I past him in the elevator."

"And you assumed it was my fault."

"These things usually are, in my defense."

"He tried to force sub caring and sharing time on me, I told him to fuck off, end of story."

Pepper sighs. "You're going to have to have a talk with them, this is ridiculous."

Tony sighs, curls up into a ball around his tablet. "I know. It's been a long day, Pep. I can't do people right now." Bruce returns to rubbing his back. "Can it wait? Just for a while, I promise."

"Yeah," Pepper says softly. "Ok."

Tony exhales. "Ok."


End file.
